u/wells_riley

Written by a human... AI did not write or edit this post.

I saw that u/arnegiacomo posted fugleramme the other day, and it turns out we've been building the same thing on opposite sides of the pond. Still a work in progress, but wanted to share mine... it's called Featherframe.

I have BirdNET-go running in my homelab, with two remote pi-powered mics in the yard listening for birds. It uses on-device intelligence to identify birdsong, which is pretty cool. I also like having stats across seasons to see the comings and goings.

I've wanted to do an eink project for a while, and thought the Audubon Birds of America (public domain) would look way nicer on eink than on a LCD tablet or something... so I finally pulled the trigger on the seeed studio 10" eink kit.

I thought about color (and still want to try it) but the fact that this panel supports partial refresh really appealed to me, and seemed like a better fit for something living ambiently in my house. I also think the engravings look way better in grayscale than I expected.

The kit is plug and play... I didn't have to do any soldering to get it working. I do wish it came with a case for the PCB though. I 3d printed one, but it's not the best. I'm also testing running it on battery power, but I'll probably leave it plugged in most of the time.

There's an optional image-model fallback for any species without an original painting. I spent an ungodly amount of time researching the authentic Audubon painting style and getting the prompt right so that the images don't look like AI-generated slop.

I actually made a game for myself to see if I can tell the difference between real and AI-generated plates. I (admittedly) can... but I'm really happy with the result: forty plates

It can do day in review (see the third image) that shows all the birds that BirdNET detected that day. Even though it's AI, I am really pleased with how it came out, and I'm excited to be able to pull my BirdNET data into the real world.

Happy to go into the render pipeline if anyone wants. WIP code is on GitHub if you want to poke at it, but it's currently kind of a mess. My goal is to release the esp32 firmware, web admin, and instructions so anyone can build one of their own with limited technical knowledge.

Thanks for looking!

I bought a used RX2 on eBay a few months ago that was working perfectly (even had a remanufactured SMMC cart installed!) except for the Play button.

I worked around it by pressing Cue twice for a little while, but decided to fix it. It was an easy enough repair, just a frayed wire probably from a past service... but while I was disconnecting the front panel controls I had an idea.

I'm not really an audiophile, and I don't have fancy speakers. Just some Sonos speakers scattered around my house. I have the turntable plugged into a Sonos Connect (via a phono amp) which works a treat, except if I need to pause the music, or want to play the record already sitting on the platter from another room. A seemingly minor inconvenience, but it honestly does just make me want to listen to vinyl less.

What if I could add a (non-invasive) remote controller that lets me "press" the turntable buttons from anywhere in my house? I use Home Assistant, and dabble with custom circuit board design, so I decided to give it a shot.

Long story short, I used something called an ESP32 (basically a tiny cheap wi-fi connected computer) to listen for commands from Sonos, and to detect the current play/pause/stop status of the record player... and it works great! The custom PCB plugs in between the front panel control ribbon cable and the main motherboard, so it's a non-destructive mod that can be removed anytime.

I recorded a video of my build, and also decided to publish the circuit board files and firmware on my github page.

IDK if this kind of thing is interesting to yall, but I had a lot of fun trying to combine something old with something new in a way that makes it easier for me to enjoy my vintage gear. Cheers!

I was hoping to share during MARCHintosh but sharing now that I finally got things over the finish line.

Similar to others (notably Sideburn and Colin, and others I'm sure), I built my own mini Macintosh using one of those Maclock clocks from AliExpress. I decided to go the route of designing my own custom PCB that replaces the clock completely, and brings brightness control, buttons, sound, and power (both USB-C and battery).

I'm a novice with circuit design, so the implementation is basic and there's certainly a lot of room for improvement. Regardless, I wanted to share my project with you all to hopefully inspire you or help you build your own. I'm not selling the boards or any premade assembled Maclocks, but you can order your own boards from PCBway for a very reasonable price.

I posted a written guide on my GitHub, as well as a full assembly walkthrough video.

On the software side, I wanted to run a more modern Linux kernel and SheepShaver rather than the Mini vMac guides I've seen posted online running on Bullseye. With some doing, I finally got it to run.

If you want to follow the same steps I did, I have my Macintosh Mini SheepShaver install guide, and it includes an automation script that compiles SheepShaver, sets it up to run at boot, and sets up the button/brightness controls, and even a user-selectable boot chime—all in one shot. (Disclaimer: yes, I did use AI to turn my written guide into the automation script. If that's not your jam, the written guide is just as complete... it just takes longer!)

Let me know what you think, and thanks for checking it out.

PS: if there's enough interest, I'd be willing to organize a group buy for the PCBs and passive components on the board.